Velvet

by Temple West

  There was a moment of silence. Then—“I promise.”

  I stuck my hand out blindly in his direction, and felt him grab it. We shook on it awkwardly and I settled back in my seat, feeling as though I’d taken a step in the right direction of gaining control of my life.

  We’d listened through two full playlists on his phone by the time Adrian pulled the truck to a stop. He unbuckled my seat belt and pulled me across the bench seat and out his door.

  “I am capable of independent movement,” I explained, in case he had any doubts.

  “True, but it’s more fun this way.”

  I tried to glower through my blindfold. “Can I open my eyes yet?”

  “No.”

  I heard him crunch through the snow to the back of the truck. I turned in a small circle to follow the noise of his movements.

  “You’re cute when you do that,” he called to me.

  “When I do what?”

  “Turn in a circle like that. It’s kind of penguin-y.”

  “Great,” I called back. “Just what every girl dreams of being told by their inhumanly attractive, immortal vampire protector: they look kind of ‘penguin-y.’”

  “You think I’m attractive?”

  I heard something land at my feet and I flinched, lost my balance with one leg, slipped on a patch of ice with the other, and was halfway falling when I suddenly found myself suspended in midair. I had no idea how Adrian had gotten to me so quickly or so quietly but, well, it was Adrian.

  I pointed at my face. “Now can I take the blindfold off?”

  Adrian propped me up again. “Yes, you may.”

  I dragged the cloth off my eyes and blinked into the bright white snow. I didn’t recognize where we were. Definitely not in town anymore. If anything, we were higher in the mountains. I couldn’t even pick out a road, just the tracks of Adrian’s truck through the snow.

  And that’s when I spotted it.

  “Oh, hell no.”

  He grinned at me, looking very pleased with himself. “I figured that since so much has happened in the past week or so, you deserved a little fun.”

  “Adrian,” I said desperately, “the last time I tried this I was five and I ran into a brick wall.”

  He patted my shoulder. “That’s why you’re not steering.”

  I found myself being dragged to the edge of a very long, very steep hill.

  “I really don’t think this is a good idea,” I told him as he set the sled down and then made me sit. He settled himself snugly behind me and reached around my waist for the rope. “I mean, you’re immortal and that’s fine and all, but I’m a sad, pathetic normal person. I break.”

  “Y’know what I think? I think you have major trust issues. And I think that since I’m both your fake boyfriend and your real bodyguard, it’s time we tried out some trust exercises.”

  “I don’t think—” but I cut myself off with a high-pitched scream as Adrian kicked us off down the hill. I wanted to close my eyes, but not watching the trees whiz by was more terrifying than blindly hoping we didn’t crash into one.

  “Isn’t this fun?” Adrian yelled in my ear.

  “No!” I yelled back, grabbing his legs so I wouldn’t fly off. He laughed loudly.

  “Just relax!”

  “If I relax, I die!”

  The thing is, I’m not easily scared. I went on the stomach-dropping rides at Disney World. I kissed a frog once, when I was a kid, because it seemed like a good idea. I only had a few nightmares after watching The Sixth Sense. But Adrian was steering like it was the bobsledding Olympics and he was trying to break a speed record.

  Finally, finally, the hill evened out and we slowed, trailing to a stop at the edge of a small frozen pond in the middle of the woods. I leaned back against Adrian and closed my eyes, trying to get my racing heart to calm the crap down. He put his arms around my waist happily.

  “That was fun.”

  “If you weren’t my fake boyfriend, I’d beat you with a stick.”

  “You mean, if I weren’t a vampire, you’d beat me with a stick.”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “You had fun. Admit it.”

  I opened my eyes and stared up at him. “You have no real concept of ‘death,’ do you?”

  He shrugged. “We were never in any danger.”

  I muttered about showing him some danger as he slid off a backpack I hadn’t noticed him wearing and pulled out two pairs of ice-skates. Well, the small, white pair were skates—the large black ones looked like meat cleavers.

  “Lace up, Ms. Holte,” he said, tossing the smaller pair at my feet. As opposed to when his aunt—sister—sister-aunt?—had called me that, coming from him, it almost sounded like a term of endearment. ‘Ms. Holte’—I kind of liked it.

  I laced the skates on unhappily, knowing I was about to make a giant ass of myself out on the ice. It was hard to be average around someone like Adrian. I mean, I could kick his ass if we were competing on Project Runway, but the odds of that happening were slim to none.

  “You ever done this before?” he asked, helping me take the blade protectors off.

  I stared at the pond. “I’ve been to a rink two or three times. Nothing like this, though.”

  He grinned. “Perfect. Come on.” He led me to the edge of the pond, holding on to my arms.

  “I don’t suppose I should even bother asking if the ice will hold us?”

  He put his arms around my waist. I held on tightly as he pushed us out onto the lake.

  “It’s been below freezing for almost a month. Plus, it’s only five feet deep—I’ve tested it out in summer.”

  All of a sudden he let go, and I clutched his jacket desperately. “What are you doing?”

  “Just trust me.”

  He peeled my fingers off his coat and held me at arm’s length so that only our fingertips touched, then skated backward expertly, forcing me to actually pick up my feet and skate with him. I concentrated on his skates, waiting for him to suddenly let go and sprint away from me. He didn’t.

  “You’re smiling.”

  I looked up at him quickly. “No, I’m not.”

  “Oh. My bad. I thought you were having a good time.”

  “Nope. This is one hundred percent awful.”

  He nodded and slowed, holding my hand over my head, skating around me in a slow, graceful circle. Then he stopped and raised his hand, forcing me to spin in a slow, clumsy circle.

  I grimaced. “I told you I wasn’t good at this.”

  “You’re doing great,” he said with what sounded like sincerity. I looked up to check and then stared, puzzled.

  “Why are your eyes glowing?”

  His mouth drew up at the corner slightly. “I don’t know.”

  I looked down, suddenly embarrassed, and not sure why. He put his right arm around my waist and held my hand, pushing me backward. We gathered speed and I had no idea how he didn’t trip over my fumbling skates, but somehow he managed not to, and soon we were gliding gracefully, arching around the pond, spinning together from one end to the other. Eventually we glided to a stop near the edge, his arms still secured around my waist.

  And—it was kind of nice, actually, to be held. I mean, I hadn’t really touched a lot of people recently. In the hospital, I wasn’t allowed to have contact with my mom, because the risk of infection was too high, for her. After that, I just didn’t really want anyone to touch me.

  But it was nice, standing here with him. It was more than nice.

  Suddenly, I was afraid to look at him.

  “You’re right,” I mumbled at his feet. “That was fun.”

  His hands tightened around me for a moment, and I risked a glance up. He was smiling lightly, eyes still burning silver. “Told you.”

  We looked at each other a moment too long, and both became aware of it at the same time. He cleared his throat, letting me go, and glanced up the hill.

  “You hungry? There’s lunch in the truck.”

  I
nodded and we sat and switched our skates out for boots, but when I tried to stand again, he nudged me so that I fell over onto the sled.

  “What?” I asked, confused. “Aren’t we going back?”

  “Yep,” he said, and picked up the handle.

  “What, are you gonna pull me up the hill?”

  He frowned at me in an amused sort of way. “Caitlin, I don’t think you’ve really grasped the fact that I’m not fully human.”

  And with that he started jogging, pulling me behind him like I weighed nothing. I thought about mentioning that I might be human, but I could still walk, and then I realized he was pulling me up the hill faster than I could have run it, and I would’ve had to rest many, many times.

  When we reached the top, I hid my amazement with sarcasm. “Am I allowed to stand now?”

  He reached a hand down to me in reply. I took it and stood, watching as he threw the sled in the back of the truck before pulling out a small cooler. We hopped up onto the hood and he produced a thermos from out of nowhere. Adrian was like a sexy, scary Mary Poppins.

  “Your aunt said you like hazelnut,” he said, pouring me a cup of steaming coffee into a little tin cup.

  “I do.”

  I was sort of touched that he’d taken the trouble to find out. For as much vampire trivia as I’d learned recently, there was a lot about him I didn’t know.

  He pulled out sandwiches wrapped in cloth napkins, little bags of fresh vegetables, and apple slices. I felt like I was in first grade again.

  “So you’re a chef as well as a vampire?”

  “God no—I can barely slap together a PB&J. Mariana made the lunch. She’s a bit of a foodie.”

  Part of me was really amused that Mariana had deigned to make a meal for little old human me, but all I said was, “Oh, good. It would be boring if you were incredible at everything.” I winked at him to let him know I was kidding. “Speaking of food, my aunt wanted to invite you over for Thanksgiving. I told her you probably wanted to eat with your own family. You totally don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

  He leaned back against the windshield, one arm tucked behind his head, which made his shirt pull up just enough for me to see a slice of rock-hard abs. The wind ruffled his hair and he looked like he should be in Vogue’s winter issue.

  “I’d love to, but Julian’ll be in town, and we already decided we’d have a big family dinner. I’d invite you over, but we always drink during the holidays.”

  It took me a second longer than it should’ve to realize he didn’t mean alcohol.

  “When it’s bagged, and there’s a fresh supply sitting right across the table—” He shook his head. “It’s just not a good idea.”

  “Sure,” I said, a little more high-pitched than necessary, and took a sip of coffee.

  “But that brings up a good point: what to do about holidays. I suppose it’s a little early in the relationship to spend Christmas Day together, but what about Christmas Eve?”

  What odd conversations we had. “Sounds good. I’m sure my aunt and uncle would love having you over. Well,” I amended, “I’m sure Rachel would love having you over. I think Joe’s still warming up to the fact that we’re an item.” He smiled and I blushed. “What about your family? I should probably spend some time over there, so everything looks equal.”

  He seemed to consider this. “How about we come over to my place that afternoon and your place that evening?”

  I nodded and took another bite of sandwich. He set down his apple and hopped down from the truck. “That reminds me—happy birthday.”

  I looked at him funny. “My birthday kind of already happened.”

  “I know, but I ordered your present and it just came yesterday.”

  “You got me something?” I asked, mouth full of sandwich.

  He just smiled and rummaged through the backseat of the truck, returning with a brown-paper-covered box wrapped up in a red bow. He set it on the hood with a heavy thud.

  “Geez, what’d you get me, a bowling ball?”

  “I would be frightened to see you with a bowling ball in hand.”

  “Hey! I am completely average at bowling.”

  He smiled. “Open it.”

  I felt weirdly nervous as I set my sandwich down and untied the bow. The lid popped right off and I pulled out one of a dozen framed vintage couture gown designs. Really, really old couture gown designs.

  “Wow,” I breathed. “Where did you get these?”

  “Mariana was apprenticed to a couturier once upon a time. I found them in the attic when I was a kid living at her old place in Paris, and she said I could take them.”

  I looked in the corner of the sketch and found a date. “But—these are from 1923.”

  He raised his eyebrow, as if waiting for something to dawn on me.

  It finally did.

  “Ha! Right. ’Cause Mariana’s, like, a hundred and fifty years old. Got it.” He smiled and took another bite of sandwich. “But wait, how did you know I was into sewing?”

  It wasn’t really a secret, but I also didn’t broadcast it at school. All the sewing stuff I’d brought with me to Stony Creek was boxed up in my room, and as far as I was aware, he’d never been in there.

  He looked a little uncomfortable. “When our father picked you as his next target, we researched your family—standard procedure. We learned that your mother was a seamstress and that you both donated quilts to the neonatal ward at the hospital.”

  “Oh.”

  I wasn’t really sure whether that was reassuring or creepy. We finished up lunch and headed back to the ranch. Adrian was right—it had been a fun day. But his comment about researching my family just drove home the fact that I was an assignment to him. Maybe we were actually friends, too, but we certainly weren’t anything more. That shouldn’t bother me—I tried to convince myself that it didn’t bother me.

  But on some level, it did.

  10

  HYDROPHILIC INTERACTIONS, SIBLING RIVALRY, AND CHRISTMAS SHOPPING

  I threw my pen dagger-style at my chemistry book, because my chemistry book deserved it. I was sitting in the de la Mara’s monstrous library on one of the many overstuffed couches, surrounded by bearskin rugs and spiraling, two-story bookshelves.

  “What in particular do you not understand?” Adrian asked, rappelling down from the ceiling and hovering above the coffee table where my homework was spread out. He was wearing military-issue pants, fingerless black gloves, and a tight black T-shirt. I’d spent the entire afternoon trying not to laugh at how absurd he should have looked rappelling around a library in partial military gear. Somehow, he pulled it off without looking like an ass. In answer to his question, however, I pointed at the textbook.

  “That. I don’t understand that.”

  He looked over at me, his body completely parallel to the ground. “You don’t understand the entire book?”

  I looked sad. “Yeah.”

  He nodded contemplatively, then grinned. “All right,” he said, grabbing me. “Up.”

  I yelped as he pushed off from the coffee table, propelling us twenty feet in the air. Coming to a stop, he grabbed on to the lip of a bookshelf, bent his knees (while I clung to his neck for dear life—he was the one strapped in, not me), and catapulted us across the library toward the door, landing gently. Setting me down, he opened a large steamer chest and pulled out a harness similar to the one he was wearing, except ten sizes smaller.

  “Put this on.”

  “Why?” I asked suspiciously.

  He looked at me like the answer was obvious. “We’re going to study.”

  I’d recently had the epiphany that when Adrian said things that didn’t make sense, it was faster to just go along with it—eventually he’d always come around to explaining himself. I stepped into the harness and pulled it on. He helped cinch the straps so that I wouldn’t fall out, then grabbed a connected pair of cords hanging from the ceiling and attached them to the carabiners at my hips.

/>   Still holding on to the cords, he looked down at me. “When you want to ascend, just jump and the line will recede with you. If you want to go down, release the tension by pressing this button,” he said, pointing to a shiny black button on the side of the harness. “I’ll be moving us around the room, so you don’t need to worry about that. You ready?”

  I blinked at him. “I think so?”

  “Good.”

  He grabbed my harness and threw me in the air like I weighed nothing. I rose almost thirty feet before gravity finally slowed me down. Adrian got a running start and jumped off the back of a couch, climbing through the air like a militarized Peter Pan until he was hanging opposite me.

  “This is fun,” I said with a happy smile.

  “You’re studying hydrophilic and hydrophobic interactions, right?”

  “Yep. Hey, can you do a somersault in these?”

  I leaned forward hesitantly, and the harness allowed me to pivot. Suddenly I lost my balance and fell forward, hanging upside down, and instantly realized I should have asked Adrian if the harness would stay on upside down. Luckily, it did. He grabbed hold of my ankle and pushed me upright, looking amused.

  “Are you having fun?”

  I just grinned.

  “All right,” he said. “Now hydro means ‘water’ and philos means ‘love,’ so hydrophilic means ‘water-loving.’ That means if you are a water molecule and I am, say, a glucose molecule, I will be attracted to you because we’re both polar.”

  He propelled himself forward and grabbed hold of the cords connected to my harness so that we were hovering a mere half foot apart. I knew he was only talking about regular old science-y chemistry, but his voice had this natural purr to it that made me want to make a lame joke about chemistry chemistry.

  “Hydrophobic is the opposite,” he continued, blissfully unaware of my inner thoughts. “It’s ‘water-fearing.’ Although that’s misleading—it should be hydro-doesn’t-give-a-rat’s-ass. If you’re, again, a water molecule, and I’m an oil molecule, you have poles, but I don’t. We don’t repel each other, exactly; we simply don’t bond.” He pushed off from me and floated five feet away.